It was bound to happy sooner or later. Try as we might to shield Ruby from the infectious outside world, we knew that eventually she’d be exposed. Sending her to preschool only increased the odds, and now, finally, it has happened: she’s been invited to a Disney Princess Birthday Party. Kate and I both anti-princessification, [...]
Pretty Pretty Papa Princess
April 22, 2009
Trust and Failure
April 13, 2008
Earlier this month, the NY Sun published an article by Lenore Skenazy, a woman who let her nine-year-old son ride the bus home from Manhattan, unaccompanied, as an exercise in building confidence and independence. She was subsequently labeled the worst mom in the world. I’m totally in support of her goal to break us out [...]
Heave Ho
February 11, 2008
I’m starting off another work week with a sore back. It’s now been six months that I’ve had constant lower back pain. I’ve tried both resting and exercising, and neither has seemed to work — although I’m still working hard on the latter and have only recently started making decent progress towards some of my [...]
Missing Ruby
November 28, 2007
Work is ramping up for a big release next week, and so I’m working longer hours than usual. And that means I’ll be spending less time with Ruby. Right now my work hours are shifted a little early than in the morning so that I can come home and have dinner with my family. That [...]
This Morning On The Bus
November 7, 2007
On this morning’s bus ride there was a woman with two little girls (2 or 3 years old?) in a double pram. One of the girls was unhappy and would occasionally scream. This was a bus at 7am, full of morning commuters. The pram took up a bunch of extra space. Screaming on a bus [...]
Shout out to the G-units
August 18, 2007
Kate and I have been suffering the past few days. I injured my back playing soccer on Thursday and have been barely able to stand. Kate picked up a bug on the way back from Mexico, and so she’s been feeling drained — and hasn’t been able to relax because I can’t step it up [...]
Bye, bye plane
July 12, 2007
It’s a bit surprising, seeing as Kate and I are seasoned world travelers, but we’ve never taken a plane trip with Ruby. We’re thinking of remedying that this summer with a trip down to California or Mexico, but stories like this give me pause: A passenger on a Continental ExpressJet flight from Houston to Oklahoma [...]
Trouble!
January 24, 2007
Baby gate? What baby gate? Now I understand why they were available with a bulk discount at the consignment store.
More on Princesses
December 27, 2006
Kate’s Mom sent us a very good article from the NYT about the Princess trend. I expect to be dealing with a lot of the issues raised in the article over the next few years. This paragraph from the article sums up my objections pretty handily: “Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel [...]
The Benefits of Boredeom
December 1, 2006
A recent ParentingIdeas.org article talks about the benefits of boredom: Strange as it may sound, bordom [sic] promotes happier, creative kids who are better problem solvers. When children use their own creativity with unstructured play, they find ways to amuse themselves — even if it means simply daydreaming. … This has been our plan for [...]